[Wexford 01] From Doon & Death

by Ruth Rendell

  It was half past six before the whole litter of pigs had been delivered. The vet had gone into the kitchen to wash his hands and they had all had a cup of tea. At seven he left by the same way as he had come, the front entrance, giving a lift to Edwards, Traynor and Bysouth, who all lived in farm workers' cottages at a hamlet called Clusterwell, some two miles outside Flagford. During the Prewetts' absence Mrs Creavey was staying at the farm overnight The manager performed his final round at eight and went home to his house about fifty yards down the Clusterwell Road.

  Wexford checked with the vet and decided that, apart from mystery story miracles, no one had had time to murder Mrs Parsons and conceal her body in the wood. Only Bysouth had used the lane that passed the wood, and unless he had abandoned his charges dangerously near a derestricted road he was beyond suspicion. To be sure, Mrs Creavey had been alone and out of sight from three-thirty until six-thirty, but she was at least sixty, fat and notoriously arthritic.

  Wexford tried to fix the time Bysouth had passed down and then up the lane, but the cowman didn't wear a watch and his life seemed to be governed by the sun. He protested vehemently that his mind had been on the sow's travail and that he had seen no one on the track, in the wood or walking in the fields.

  Dorothy Sweeting was the only one of them who might remotely be supposed to have owned the Arctic Sable lipstick. But there is a particularly naked raw look about the face of a woman in an unpainted state when that woman habitually uses make-up. Dorothy Sweeting's face was sunburnt and shiny; it looked as if it had never been protected from the weather by cream and powder. The men were almost derisive when Wexford asked them if they had ever seen lipstick on her mouth.

  ‘You didn't go to the farm all day, Miss Sweeting?'

  Dorothy Sweeting laughed a lot Now she laughed heartily. It seemed that to her the questioning was just like part of a serial or a detective story come to life.

  'Not to it’ she said, 'but I went near it. Guilty, my lord!' Wexford didn't smile, so she went on: ‘I went to see my auntie in Sewingbury after the lecture and it was such a lovely afternoon I got off the bus a mile this side of Pomfret and walked the rest of the way. Old Bysouth was bringing the cows in and I did just stop and have a chat with him.'

  'What time would that have been?'

  ‘Fiveish. It was the four-ten bus from Sewingbury’

  'All right, Miss Sweeting. Your prints will be destroyed after the check has been made.'

  She roared with laughter. Looking at her big broad hands, her forearms like the village blacksmith's. Burden wondered what she intended to do with her life after she had qualified for whatever branch of bucolic craft she was studying.

  Hang on to them by all means,' she said. ‘I’d like to take my place in the rogues' gallery’

  They drove back to Kingsmarkham along the quiet half-empty road. There was still an hour to go before the evening rush began. The sun had dimmed and the mackerel sky thickened until it looked like curds and whey. On the hedges that bordered the road the May blossom still lingered, touched now with brown as if it had been singed by fleering fire.

  Wexford led the way into the police station and they had Miss Sweeting's prints checked with the ones on the lipstick. As Wexford had expected, they didn't match. The student's big pitted fingertips were more like a man's than a woman's.

  ‘I want to find the owner of that lipstick, Mike’ he said again. ‘I want every chemist's shop in this place gone over with a small toothcomb. And you'd better do it yourself because if s not going to be easy.'

  Does it have to have any connection with Mrs Parsons, sir? Couldn't it have been dropped by someone going up the track?'

  'Look, Mike, that lipstick wasn't by the road. It was right on the edge of the wood. Apart from the fact that they don't use the lane, Sweeting and Mrs Creavey don't wear lipstick and even if they did they wouldn't be likely to have one in a peculiar shade of pinkish brown like this. You know as well as I do, when a woman only uses lipstick on high days and holidays, for some reason or other, a sense of daring probably, she always picks a bright red. This is a filthy colour, the sort of thing a rich woman might buy if she'd already got a dozen lipsticks and wanted the latest shade for a gimmick.'

  Burden knew Kingsmarkham well, but he got the local trade directory to check and found that there were seven chemists in Kingsmarkham High Street, three in side roads and one in a village which had now been absorbed as a suburb into Kingsmarkham itself. Bearing in mind what Wexford had said about a rich woman, he started on the High Street

  The supermarket had a cosmetics counter, but they kept only a limited stock of the more expensive brands. The assistant knew Mrs Parsons by name, having read that she was missing in a newspaper. She also knew her by sight and was agog. Burden didn't tell her the body had been found and he didn't waste any more time on questions when he learnt that, as far as the girl could remember, Mrs Parsons had bought only a tin of cheap talcum powder in the past month.

  "That's a new line’ said the assistant in the next shop. If s only just come out. It comes in a range of fur shades, sort of soft and subtle, but we don't stock it We wouldn't have the sale for it, you see.'

  He walked up towards the Kingsbrook Bridge past the Georgian house that was now the Youth Employment Bureau, past the Queen Anne house that was now a solicitor's office, and entered a newly opened shop in a block with maisonettes above it. It was bright and clean, with a dazzling stock of pots and jars and bottles of scent They kept a large stock of the brand, he was told, but were still awaiting delivery of the fur range.

  The waters of the brook had settled and cleared. Burden could see the flat round stones on the bottom. He leaned over the parapet and saw a fish jump. Then he went on, weaving his way between groups of schoolchildren. High School girls in pana-mas and scarlet blazers, avoiding prams and baskets on wheels. He had called at four shops before he found one that stocked the fur range. But they had only sold one and that in a colour called Mutation Mink, and they didn't put prices on their goods. The girl in the fifth shop, a queenly creature with hair like pineapple candy-floss, said that she was wearing Arctic Sable herself. She lived in a flat above the shop and she went upstairs to fetch the lipstick. It was identical to the one found in the wood except that it had no price written on its base.

  If s a difficult shade to wear,' the girl said. 'We've sold a couple in the other colours but that sort of brownish tint puts the customers off.'

  Now there were no more shops on this side of the High Street, only a couple of big houses, the Methodist Church - Mrs Parsons' church - standing back from the road behind a sweep of gravel, a row of cottages, before the fields began. He crossed the street at The Olive and Dove and went into a chemist's shop between a florist's and an estate agents. Burden had sometimes bought shaving cream in this shop and he knew the man who came out from the dispensary at the back. But he shook his head at once. They didn't stock any cosmetics of that make.

  There were only two left a little poky place with jars of hair cream and toothbrushes in the window, and an elegant emporium, double-fronted, with steps up to the door and a bow window. The vendor of hair cream had never even heard of Arctic Sable. He climbed up a short ladder and took from a shelf a cardboard box of green plastic cylinders.

  'Haven't sold a lipstick inside a fortnight,' he said.

  Burden opened the door of the double-fronted shop and stepped on to wine-coloured carpet. All the perfumes of Arabia seemed to be assembled on the counters and the gilded tables. Musk and ambergris and new-mown hay assaulted his nostrils. Behind a pyramid of boxes, encrusted with glitter and bound with ribbon, he could see the back of a girl's head, a girl with short blonde curls wearing a primrose sweater. He coughed, the girl turned and he saw that it was a young man.

  Isn't it a delightful shade?' the young man said. 'So young and fresh and innocent. Oh, yes, definitely one of ours. I mark everything with this’ And he picked up a purple ball-point pen from beside the cash register.
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  ‘I don't suppose you could tell me who you sold this one to?'

  'But I love probing and detecting! Let’s be terribly thorough and have a real investigation.'

  He opened a drawer with a knob made of cut glass and took out a tray of gilt lipsticks. There were several in each compartment.

  Xet me see,' he said. 'Mutation Mink, three gone. I started off with a dozen of each shade. Trinidad Tiger - good heavens, nine gone! Rather a common sort of red, that one. Here we are, Arctic Sable, four gone. Now for my thinking cap.'

  Burden said encouragingly that he was being most helpful.

  'We do have a regular clientele, what you might call a segment of the affluent society. I don't want to sound snobbish, but I do rather eschew the cheaper lines. I remember now. Miss Clements from the estate agenf s had one. No, she had two, one for herself and one for someone's birthday present Mrs Darrell had another. I do recall that because she took Mutation Mink and changed her mind just as she was going out of the shop. She came back and changed it and while she was making up her mind someone else came in for a pale pink lipstick. Of course, Mrs Missal! She took one look - Mrs Darrell had tried the shade out on her wrist - and she said, "That is absolutely me!" Mrs Missal has exquisite taste because, whatever you may say, Arctic Sable is really intended for red-heads like her.'

  'When was this?' Burden asked. 'When did you get the fur range in?'

  ‘Just a tick.' He checked in a delivery book. 'Last Thursday, just a week ago. I sold the two to Miss Clements soon after they came in. Friday, I should say. I wasn't here on Saturday and Monday's always slack. Washing, you know. Tuesday's early closing and I know I didn't sell any yesterday. It must have been Tuesday morning.'

  'You've been a great help,' Burden said.

  'Not at all. You've brought a little sparkle into my workaday world. By the by, Mrs Missal lives in that rather lovely bijou house opposite the Olive and Dove, and Mrs Darrell has the maisonette with the pink curtains in the new block in Queen Street'

  As luck had it. Miss Clements had both lipsticks in her handbag, her own partly used, and the other one she had bought for a present still wrapped in cellophane paper. As Burden left the estate agents he glanced at his watch. Half past five. He had just made it before they all closed. He ran Mrs Darrell to earth in the maisonette next to her own. She was having tea with a friend, but she went down the spiral staircase at the back of the block and up the next one, coming back five minutes later with an untouched lipstick, Arctic Sable, marked eight-and-six in violet ink on its base.

  The Stowerton-to-Pomfret bus was coming up the hill as he turned out of Queen Street and crossed the forecourt of The Olive and Dove. He checked with his watch and saw that it was gone ten to six. Maybe it had been late leaving Stowerton, maybe it often was. Damn those stupid women and their lipsticks, he thought; Parsons must have done it

  The lovely bijou house was a Queen Anne affair, much done up with white paint, wrought iron and window-boxes. The front door was yellow, flanked with blue lilies in stone urns. Burden struck the ship's bell with a copper clapper that hung on a length of cord. But, as he had expected, no one came. The garage, a converted coach-house, was empty and the doors stood open. He went down the steps again, crossed the road and walked up to the police station, wondering as he went how Bryant had got on with the Southern Water Board.

  Wexford seemed pleased about the lipstick. They waited until Bryant had got back from Stowerton before going down to The Olive and Dove for dinner.

  It looks as if this clears Parsons’ Wexford said. 'He left the Water Board at five-thirty or a little after. Certainly not before. He couldn't have caught the five-thirty-two.'

  'No’ Burden said reluctantly, 'and there isn't another till six-two’

  They went into the dining-room of The Olive and

  Dove and Wexford asked for a window table so that they could watch Mrs Missal's house.

  By the time they had finished the roast lamb and started on the gooseberry tart the garage doors were still open and no one had come into or gone out of the house. Burden remained at the table while Wexford went to pay the bill, and just as he was getting up to follow him to the door he saw a blonde girl in a cotton dress enter the High Street from the Sewingbury Road. She walked past the Methodist Church, past the row of cottages, ran up the steps of Mrs Missal's house and let herself in at the front door.

  'Come on, Mike’ Wexford said. He banged at the bell with the clapper. 'Look at that bloody thing,' he said. ‘I hate things like that.'

  They waited a few seconds. Then the door was opened by the blonde girl. 'Mrs Missal?'

  'Mrs Missal, Mr Missal, the children, all are out’ she said. She spoke with a strong foreign accent 'All are gone to the sea.'

  'We're police officers’ Wexford said. 'When do you expect Mrs Missal back?'

  'Now is seven.' She glanced behind her at a black grandfather clock. 'Half past seven, eight. I don't know. You come back again in a little while. Then she come.'

  'Well wait, if you don't mind’ Wexford said.

  They stepped over the threshold on to velvety blue carpet It was a square hall, with a staircase running up from the centre at the back and branching at the tenth stair. Through an arch on the right-hand side of this staircase Burden saw a dining-room with a polished floor partly covered by Indian rugs in pale colours. At the far end of this room-open trench windows gave on to a wide and apparently endless garden. The hall was cool, smelling faintly of rare and subtle flowers.

  'Would you mind telling me your name, miss, and what you're doing here?' Wexford asked.

  Inge Wolff. I am nanny for Dymphna and Priscilla.'

  Dymphna! Burden thought, aghast His own children were John and Pat

  'All right. Miss Wolff. If you'll just show us where we can sit down you can go and get on with your work.'

  She opened a door on the left side of the hall and Wexford and Burden found themselves in a large drawing-room whose bow windows faced the street The carpet was green, the chairs and a huge sofa covered in green linen patterned with pink and white rhododendrons. Real rhododendrons, saucer sized heads of blossom on long stems, were massed in two white vases. Burden had the feeling that when rhododendrons went out of season Mrs Missal would fill the vases with delphiniums and change the covers accordingly.

  'No shortage of lolly’ Wexford said laconically when the girl had gone. This is the sort of set-up I had in mind when I said she might buy Arctic Sable for a gimmick.'

  'Cigarette, sir?'

  'Have you gone raving mad. Burden? Maybe you'd like to take your tie off. This is Sussex, not Mexico.'

  Burden restored the packet and they sat in silence for ten minutes. Then he said, ‘I bet she's got that lipstick in her handbag.'

  'Look, Mike, four were sold, all marked in violet ink. Right? Miss Clements has two, Mrs Darrell has one. I have the fourth.'

  There could be a chemist in Stowerton or Pomfret or Sewingbury marking lipsticks in violet ink'

  That's right, Mike. And if Mrs Missal can show me hers you're going straight over to Stowerton first thing in the morning and start on the shops over there.'

  But Burden wasn't listening. His chair was facing the window and he craned his neck.

  'Car's coming in now’ he said. 'Olive-green Mercedes, nineteen-sixty-two. Registration XPQ189Q.'

  'All right, Mike, I don't want to buy it.'

  As the wheels crunched on the drive and someone opened one of the nearside doors. Burden ducked his head.

  'Blimey’ he said. 'She is something of a dish.'

  A woman in white slacks stepped out of the car and strolled to the foot of the steps. The kingfisher-blue and darker-blue patterned silk scarf that held back her red hair matched her shirt Burden thought she was beautiful, although her face was hard, as if the tanned skin was stretched on a steel frame. He was paid not to admire but to observe. For him the most significant thing about her was that her mouth was painted not brownish pink but a clear go
lden-red. He turned away from the window and heard her say loudly:

  'I am sick to my stomach of bleeding kids! I bet you anything you like, Pete, that lousy little Inge isn't back yet.'

  A key was turned in the front-door lock and Burden heard Inge Wolff running along the hall to meet her employers. One of the children was crying.

  ‘Policemen? How many policemen? Oh, I don't believe it, Inge. Where's their car?'

  ‘I suppose they want me, Helen. You know I'm always leaving the Merc outside without lights.'

  In the drawing-room Wexford grinned.

  The door opened suddenly, bouncing back from one of the flower-vases as if it had been kicked by a petulant foot. the red-haired woman came in first She was wearing sun-glasses with rhinestone frames, and although the sun had gone and the room was dim, she didn't bother to take them off. Her husband was tall and big, his face bloated and already marked with purple veins. His long shirt-tails hung over his belly like a gross maternity smock. Burden winced at its design of bottles and glasses and plates on a scarlet and white checkerboard.

  He and Wexford got up.

  ‘Mrs Missal?'

  'Yes, I'm Helen Missal. What the hell do you want?'

  'We're police officers, Mrs Missal, making enquiries in connection with the disappearance of Mrs Margaret Parsons’

  Missal stared. His fat lips were already wet, but still he licked them.

  'Won't you sit down,' he said. ‘I can't imagine why you want to talk to my wife’

  'Neither can!’ Helen Missal said. 'What is this, a police state?'

  ‘I hope not, Mrs Missal. I believe you bought a new lipstick on Tuesday morning?'

  'So what? Is it a crime?'

  If you could just show me that lipstick, madam, I shall be quite satisfied and we won't take up any more of your time. I'm sure you must be tired after a day at the seaside’